For Mearsheimer “freedom” and “prosperity” are simply weapons of great power politics rather than aspirations sought by the Ukrainian people.
The Invasion of Ukraine is Russia’s Fault
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Recent Posts
Do Populists Kill Democracy? A Sympathetic Extension of Levitsky and Ziblatt
This is a guest post by Lucas Dolan, a PhD Student at American University’s School of International Service. His research deals with the transnational coalition-building of right-wing populist...
International Women’s Day: political crisis as windows of opportunity
As we prepare to celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th, Spanish women are getting their banners, pickets and hashtags - #yoparo (#Istop) - ready for a feminist general strike. The...
Heroes Aren’t Born, They’re Made.
This is a guest post by Ari Kohen, Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at University of Nebraska-Lincoln and author of Untangling Heroism. Follow him on Twitter here. As someone who...
More Recent Posts
The bin Laden Killing and Assassination Explained in 4 Paragraphs Not By Me
At the risk of beating a dead terrorist horse, I want to cite W. Hays Parks (former Special Advisor to the Office of Legal Counsel on Law of War Issues at DoD, JAG and possible stand in for Clint Eastwood in that Grand Torino movie) on the Osama bin Laden assassination/murder/killing debate that...
Bin Laden and the Paradoxical Logical of War
Strategist Edward Luttwak once observed that strategy has a paradoxical logic. The best way forward may be the longest way round, offence can be the best defence, and a seemingly victorious course pursued indefinitely will lead to over-reach. This is produced by the limitations of human strength,...
The 2003 Iraq War will not be forgotten
The killing of Osama bin Laden allows political leaders to further disentangle Iraq, Afghanistan and the whole war on terror concept; to wind down some operations and refocus others; to bring some stories to light and push others aside, to be forgotten. But how do those who served in these wars...
Blegging: Did no one complain about the Soviet Use of landmines in Afghanistan from 1979-1989?
I am trying to find examples of humanitarian organizations that spoke out against the use of landmines by the Soviet Union during its invasion of Afghanistan from 1979-1989. Landmines were big as one of the weapons issues put up for debate in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the UN General...
In Praise of Straw Men
How many times have you been accused of making a straw man argument? How many times have you deployed that rhetorical trump card against a foe? In blogs, in debates, in academic conference rooms, the straw man charge is a tried and true way of undermining an opponent and advancing your own...
We were Winning the War on Terror!
So he wasn't armed, and maybe it wasn't legal, and we should have found him a long time ago. But we are missing the point. Our soft power was winning the war on terror. We just had to give it some time.The Financial Times reports: "Shopkeepers remember the [Osama] household demonstrating a...
Tere bin Laden
"You Americans, you think when something dies, it goes away." - Robin Williams in the play "Tiger"In Urdu/Hindi the phrase "Tere bin Laden," which was also the title of last year's hit Bollywood comedy about the American War on Terror, is a play on words which can be read as "Your bin Laden" or...
Local Game Theorist Afraid of Credible Commitment, Girlfriend Says
The Canard"All the fake news that is fit to print"Rochester--Local game theorist Zofran Economakis is afraid of making a credible commitment to his longtime girlfriend, Lisa Johnson, his girlfriend reports. "He tells me that he loves me," Johnson told the Canard, "but how do I know he means it? He...
The 2011 Canadian Election: Lessons Learned and Mindless Amateur Speculation
Canadian democracy rests in this man's hands. Yesterday I provided a fully superficial background and survey of developments regarding the 2011 Canadian Election. The short version is 1) We’ve had a series of minority governments. 2) Stephen Harper probably thought he could get a majority, and now...
The 2011 Canadian Election: I don’t even know
Last year I was much better at blogging about the UK General Election. I thought it was going to be incredibly boring, but then there was the rise of a third party in an unexpected way which changed the balance of power. This year with Canada’s turn to re-stack the deck, I thought the election was...
North Waziristan: Drones and Compellence
North Waziristan has witnessed 20 drone strikes in the first four months of this year, which is a relatively lower number than the previous year (in 2010 there were a record setting 104 drone strikes in North Waziristan or 8.67 strikes per month). The relative "silence of the drones" this year is...
New Breed of Chicken Hawks?
John Bolton writes in the LA Times, which unlike the rest of the world I read because where else could I find out who died in my neighborhood recently, that we must stay in Afghanistan forever! Until the job gets done. I have no particularly informed opinion about this, which is kind of sad, but I...